ACROSS THE UNIVERSE: Is this the Beatles world we’d all like to think we live in?

Peter’s Five Most Overrated Films Likely To Receive Awards All the Same:1. Juno
2. Into the Wild
3. The Kite Runner
4. No End in Sight5. Lars and the Real Girl

From the murder of an underage Ukrainian sex slave in Eastern Promises to the family carnage in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, the best films of 2007 hold their own when it comes to despair, evil, and treachery. So am I being a cockeyed optimist in thinking they also offer a glimmer of hope? Maybe the unabashed exuberance of Across the Universe has checked my usual cynicism, or the dogged vindication of courage and the imagination in Le scaphandre et le papillon|The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Or maybe it’s the assurance that, despite the odds, great films still get made.

1. Le scaphandre et le papillon|The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Julian Schnabel admires artists who overcome adversity. Like Jean-Dominique Bauby, a Parisian journalist who suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed except for one eye — he wrote the memoir on which this film is based by blinking out the words in code. Most directors would be content with the pathos. Schnabel looks deeper: his subtle use of point of view and poetic images and an overwhelming performance by Mathieu Amalric illuminate the conflict, the tragedy, the terror, and the triumph.

2. Across the Universe
What would the world be like with Beatles music but no Beatles? Would the songs spring from the lives and the subconscious of common people? That would be the perfect movie musical, and Julie Taymor comes close to pulling it off, as when “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” transforms a veterans’ hospital into a zoetrope aswirl with brutal images of ‘60s conflict. Across the Universe brims with creativity — what the world was like with Beatles songs and the Beatles.

3. The Bourne Ultimatum
Arty Paul Greengrass made the best action film of 2007. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) suffers from amnesia and a guilty conscience; he’s killed, but he doesn’t know why or for whom, and neither does he know who he is. To find out, he hopscotches around the world, kicking ass and taking hits. Greengrass shot this in long takes with a handheld camera, creating a chaos with just enough clarity to let you figure it out. Kind of like Bourne himself, who suspects that the truth might set him free, but not from responsibility.

4. Red RoadAndrea Arnold’s film observes a world where even isolation has lost all humanity, where obsession, degradation, and violence are the price of making contact. It’s also an affirmation of courage and desire. A cop assigned to the Glasgow CCTV department spends the day spying on every back alley in town until an image stirs her memory, or maybe her imagination. What results draws on the lust and loss throbbing behind images. In a world where contact and betrayal converge, where public and private are the same and nothing, redemption can start with a TV screen.

The Straight Dope: Michael Jackson and the Beatles You think an overdubbed Beatles tune could be any weirder than a new Beatles song with John Lennon? Then again, "I Want to Hold You Hand" overdubbed by a guy with a hand on his crotch and his hair on fire would be pretty hard to top. But don't worry, it won't happen, or anyway, it won't happen as a result of Jackson owning the Beatles library.

The U.S. VS. John Lennon Those who are drawn to the darker side of John Lennon may find this documentary from David Leaf and John Scheinfeld’s about the murdered ex-Beatle’s political activism a tad squeaky clean. Watch the trailer for The U.S. VS. John Lennon (QuickTime)

A hero in the works This article originally appeared in the December 16, 1980 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

Cover bands It’s one thing to cover a Beatles or Harry Nilsson tune, another to cover a whole album.

Sexiest video-game studs of 2009 Video-game characters get more realistic all the time - and by more realistic, we mean sexier. This year offered a plethora of digital delights and graphical innovations, and although developers don't cater to their straight female and gay male audience nearly as much as they could, we still had no shortage of contenders for this list.